Rhetoric 146

COMMUNICATION AND RELIGION

Human beings have this strange compulsion to try to put most everything about their lives into words. It doesn't seem quite "real" until they can verbalize it. And once they do verbalize it to their satisfaction, not only does the phenomenon become real, but they also think they understand it. Equally strange is the tendency of human language to resist our attempts to put things into words. Language seems to make some things more difficult to verbalize than others. Feelings, for example, are notoriously difficult to express.

But perhaps no area of human experience presents a more formidable challenge to this verbal compulsion of ours than religion. Its subject matter- God, transcendent or spiritual experience etc. seems, by its very nature, to be beyond our capacity to express it, to put it into words. And yet from the very beginnings of recorded human communication on the walls of caves, through to our own day in churches, synagogues and everyday conversations, in writing and in oral speech, we doggedly continue to try to bring communication and religion together, to put religious experience into words so that others might share it, and perhaps also to make it real and understandable to ourselves. I call this age old Herculean effort on our part, attempts to "say the unsayable."

Some of these attempts, such as those in the Bible, have achieved the level of great art. Other more mundane attempts, perhaps even some in our own lives, deal with many of the same problems and possibilities of religious language as the Bible does. The focus of this course is on these attempts , from the sublime to the ridiculous, to "say the unsayable"--to coax language into letting us say what is perhaps, most important but also most difficult for us to put into words. We will be looking for a common set of problems and possibilities that characterize these attempts to do the difficult- to-near-impossible with language. In the process, I believe we can learn much about the nature of language and about ourselves as language-users. The course is predicated on the idea that religious experience, whatever else it is, is essentially an experience with language.

In sum, this is NOT A COURSE IN RELIGION, per se. It is A COURSE ABOUT LANGUAGE and how language is used to constitute, to construct what we call religion, especially Judaism and Christianity. If you are not prepared TO EXAMINE RELIGION AS A CONSTRUCTION OF LANGUAGE, if you don't think that such an examination would be of any value, then you would probably do better to drop the course.

In the first part of the course, we will read philosophical texts about the problem of religious language, especially "God Language": How can human beings even begin to think about God, let alone "believe" in him, enter into some soret of relationship with him, when our experience as human beings seems to be so limited by the language into which we are born and in which we live our lives? In the second part of the course, we will study some central texts of the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible. These written texts have been successful enough at "saying the unsayable" to have become the foundation of at least three world religions. In the third part of the course we will investigate the essentially "oral" attempts to transmit religious ideas and values. While the ideas which make up much of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, might be based in the Bible, they are communicated from generation to generation through family life, rituals, and preaching. Another important "oral" dimension of religious communication which will occupy us is the attempt to converse between and among religious orientations which differ in fundamentally in their notions of what is "true."

Most of the material we will study is part of the so called Judao-Christian tradition and is connected in some way to the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible. Because this is a course in how religious language works--how it communicates--I wanted to read texts which tell stories with which most of us are familiar. One cannot talk about language or communication irrespective of how that communication is read or received. Thus these familiar texts provide what probably is for most of us, a common framework of experience. Second, I wanted us to follow the history of a particular set of ideas through time to see what happens to them at different stages of transmission. The syllabus which follows can be viewed in social science terms as a kind of "longitudinal study" of certain central Biblical stories. Interspersed between and among the stories are philosophical reflections on narrative, the transmission of religious ideas, and the problems of religious language generally.

1. This is not a course in which I will be "professing" a whole lot. It is rather a mutual investigation into some issues I find interesting and hope you do too. In addition to the texts we will read together, each of us also constitutes a source of experiences about the matters we will be discussing. The sort of investigation we are undertaking is necessarily somewhat "autobiographical, because only through attention to [our]own story can [we] understand human experience common to all" (B. Pasternack). Thus it is essential that we all stay fully engaged, because, in a sense, we are investigating ourselves. So, attendance is mandatory, and your daily participation and contribution will be evaluated. If at any time, you find yourself concerned about your work in this area, or are unduly uncertain about how you are doing, please come see me.
2. This is also a "writing flag" course. That means there is a good deal of writing built into the course. While there won't be a whole lot of library research (though there will be some), the writing will be more of an investigation into your own experience--your experience of religion in your own lives, your experience of "live" events of religious communication in the form of rituals, sermons, and conversations. In a sense writing about one's own experience and reflecting on its more general significance is just as difficult if not more difficult than writing based on more traditional forms of research. In this case, the writing must not only be clear and vivid, but must be "primed" as an instrument of thinking and reflection. In other words the writing itself becomes an instrument of research and so not only will its clarity and style be evaluated, but also the level of "thinking-work" it embodies.

Part I

Clarifying The Problem

I. Words and the Word: Problems and Possibilities of Religious Language

II. The Mystery of the Unsayable

Lao Tzu

A.J. Heschel on "The Ineffable"

G. Bruns on Secrecy and Understanding

III. The Way of Reason:

Descartes

Pascal

James

IV. The Way of Faith

Augustine

V. The Way of Mysticism

Eckhardt

Kabbalah

Chasidism

PAPER I: ( Working Title) "Can You Get There From Here?: Reaching for God Through language."

Part II

VI. The Way of Stories

A. Steven Crites, "The Narrative Quality of Experience"

B. Parables and stories: what's the difference? Kierkegaard and Kafka on Parables

C. J.B. White "Ways of Reading"

VII. The Missing Woman

A. Gerda Lerner from The Creation of Patriarchy,

B. Virginia Woolf from A Room of Her Own.

VIII. Bloom's " Book of J": The Recovery of a Sacred text, its Language and its God.

A. Introduction

IX Bloom's J

A. Reading of each "cycle" plus commentary

B. Bloom's afterward

Exam

Part III

"I am a memory Come Alive."

F. Kafka

X. Photographs and memories: Transmitting the word through family life.

A. Proust

B. Canetti

C. Kafka

D. Wilk

E. Discussion of papers

XI. Ritualizing the word

A. B. Colby, '"Behavioral Redundancy"

B. F. Heiler, Ritual Prayer

C. Ritual as aesthetic event, Heschel, Gruber Fredman,

D. Black on Criticism as Humanistic research

E. Discussion of papers.

XII Preaching on the Word: The problem of "audience adaptation"

A. Preachers on preaching.

B. Robert Duvall's "Apostle"

C. Discussion of papers.

XIII Communicating Between Versions of the Word.

A. The problem: Newman, Ch. I. "The Concept of Religious Tolerance"

B. The Pessimistic View; Neusner, Chs 35 and 36.

C. The Optimistic View:

D. Dialogues and Conversations.

E. Discussion of papers.

Papers: On the days your papers are due, you will be responsible either for a short oral presentation summarizing the generalized conclusions of your study or for participation in group discussion based on your conclusions.

I.

Part A. "The stories of our lives." Describe memorable ( that is what you remember) moments in the "religious life" in your family ( family rituals, church, synagogue attendance etc.) with a specific focus on the attempts to transmit religious values from generation to generation. For those of you who grew up in homes with no obvious or institutional religious character, think of family rituals, trips etc. which were " religion like," and through which your parents tried to transmit the values and ideas which were important to them.

Part B. Reflect on family life, especially parent-child relationships, as a vehicle for transmitting religious ideas and values. What are the pitfalls and possibilities? Think about your present attitudes about religion and see if you can see a relationship between those attitudes and your "family history."

II.

A. Another important mode of "oral" religious transmission is ritual. After reading the general essays on ritual choose a church or synagogue, ask to meet with the rabbi, minister priest, to discuss the ritual on a typical Saturday or Sunday, its character, meaning, objectives etc. If he or she can recommend some reading that would also be helpful. Attend a service. (If our timing is right, it might also be possible to attend a Passover Seder or Easter service to study ritual.)

B. The paper will include an introduction which characterizes the ritual and its intended meaning or objective, describes what the ritual was like to experience; your observations of what went on during the ritual (participation etc. ), and finally reflections on the significance of what you saw for understanding ritual generally, its nature; the problems and possibilities of ritual as a way of institutionalizing religious ideas and values and infusing them in the life of the family.

III.

A. After listening to our guest preacher's presentation during which he will reflect on what preaching is, what he tries to accomplish through it, how it fits with the general liturgical context of the service in his church, the problems encountered etc., we will all attend a Sunday service at his church.

B. The paper will be a "criticism" of his preaching, including a description of what you saw, your assessment of it as a "communication" with a purpose, and finally reflections on the general problem of communicating one's own understanding and knowledge to an audience.

IV.

A. Organize a conversation with someone in class whose religious orientation is different from yours. I will provide a list of guiding questions. Based in these questions and your own interests, decide on a general conversational "agenda."

B. Your paper will include a report and assessment of the experience, as well as reflections on the problems and possibilities of conversing about religion across serious differences.

Texts:

Harold Bloom, The Book of "J"

"Reprint Packet"

Grading:

Participation and contribution: 15%

Paper I:

Mid-term exam: 30%

4 Papers: 55% ( 10, 15, 15, 15)